The Point of No Return

Here's an example of the kind of thing I've been struggling with all day:

"A plane is flying the 3458-mi trip from New York City to London has a 50-mph tailwind. The flight's point of no return is the point at which the flight time required to return to New York is the same as the time required to continue to London. If the speed of the plane in still air is 360-mph, how far is New York from the point of no return?" (Bittinger, Intermediate Algebra, 7th ed).

If that brings you back to SAT nightmares, me too.

"Attention to detail" is an area I've never scored high on in recommendations. It hasn't mattered at all, until now.

This has been a frustrating zillion hours going over math exercises. The frustrating part isn't the theory, it's the execution. I'm being fairly fast about picking up what I have to do. I can usually set up the word problems. And I'm happily amazed that (unlike Spanish) a good amount of this stuff seems to be sticking. But once I start doing the numbers, I screw up something tiny and there goes another quarter hour.

Of course I can't help but to hope that my carelessness is just a result of lack of practice, rather than a symptom. I'm wondering whether you can learn to do the details. At the same time, I also wonder if I learn how to think about and care about and be careful about details, could that mess up my fun "out there" thinking.

At the same time, I'm enjoying the struggle. In class I was chatting with a guy who had racked up a million or so points on his cell phone game. He concentrates, works hard, and has gotten good at it. I'm thinking of the chapters in my math book as different levels of a video game (minus the graphics). I'm getting better, am I slow.

Seth doesn't get it at all about why I want to learn algebra. I haven't given him a good answer. To amuse myself? Not liking being an idiot in a whole world of knowledge. The blind faith belief that you can't go wrong investing time or money in learning something new? Getting the shit scared out of myself every time I can't remember some one's name?

There is another quiz on Monday and I'm behind.